This description relates to form-based data storage and retrieval.
A form can have many fields. A design user, e.g., a person who is developing a form for use as part of a web page to be served to a workstation, might want to link one or more of these fields to a web service or data connection, so that the data contained in the field is provided as input to the web service or data connection. In addition, the user might want to link the same field or one or more of the other fields to the same (or other) web service or data connection, so that an output of the web service or data connection is used to populate the field. Linking a field to a web service or data connection involves associating the field with the data connection, such that the field either contains data that is transmitted to a data connection, receives data that is received from a data connection, or both. A data connection is a communication channel established between a client, such as a form, and a data repository, such as a web service, database, or extensible markup language (XML) data file. A web service is a specific type of data connection identified by a uniform resource indicator (URI), whose public interfaces and linkings are defined and described using XML. Further, the user may want the form to store the data contained within it in a manner that conforms to a particular schema.
Ordinarily, these tasks are achieved through the use of scripting. The user, or another individual specially trained in writing computer scripts, creates a script customized to the specific form. If the form is changed, or if a different web service or data connection needs to be linked to the form, the customized script is manually changed.